News: 0177512821

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Microsoft Cuts Off Access To Bing Search Data as It Shifts Focus To Chatbots (wired.com)

(Wednesday May 14, 2025 @11:30PM (msmash) from the end-of-road dept.)


Microsoft quietly announced earlier this week that it [1]plans to shut down a long-standing tool supplying search engine startups and other software developers with a raw feed of Bing search results. From a report:

> The Bing Search APIs, or application programming interfaces, were once vital to many niche Google alternatives, but fell out of favor more recently as Microsoft hiked fees for the service and restricted its use.

>

> The shutoff, which is scheduled to begin on August 11, still came as a surprise to several developers who spoke with WIRED. Customers learned of it on Monday via an email from Microsoft and a post on its website. They were directed to consider using "Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents," a Microsoft service that allows chatbots like ChatGPT to augment AI-generated responses with "real-time public web data." Some developers view the AI-centric alternative as an insufficient replacement.

Larger customers like DuckDuckGo told Wired they won't be affected.



[1] https://www.wired.com/story/bing-microsoft-api-support-ending/


How long until they shut off access to DuckDuckGo? (Score:3)

by pipatron ( 966506 )

"Larger customers like DuckDuckGo told Wired they won't be affected."

... for how long? While it is obviously a little ironic that DuckDuckGo routes the searches through Bing (and I was surprised the first time I read about it), it's still a sound idea and I'm glad DuckDuckGo can do it.

Or does DuckDuckGo pay dearly for the service, enough to compensate Microsoft's actual costs? Follow-up thought: If Microsoft no longer cares about Bing, will that cause DuckDuckGo to get worse over time?

See AI is popular if you force its use (Score:2)

by ebunga ( 95613 )

They bet the farm on AI and now have to force its use or they're doomed.

The big problem with pornography is defining it. You can't just
say it's pictures of people naked. For example, you have these
primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot,
and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal
saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think
you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same
time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of
Northern Mali that you may be interested in."
So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic
publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest
naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason
naked, or whatever. But if National Geographic were to publish an
article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System
Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography. But
others would not. And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev.
Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
-- Dave Barry, "Pornography"